Waypoints:Looking up, collectively

On what was basically a charter flight, private company SpaceX received about $50 million a seat to carry the two aloft (see “Pilot Briefing: Back in the Game,” page 30). It’s a bargain compared to the $80 million the Russians were reportedly charging for a seat on Soyuz rockets. Meanwhile, each space shuttle mission cost about $450 million, according to NASA.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a vision of launching rockets daily from the Kennedy Space Center, reusing many components in order to reduce costs. Meanwhile, Boeing, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic are among the other private companies looking to move people and goods on suborbital flights and all the way to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

The May launch of NASA SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 was the first carrying Americans from U.S. soil since the last flight of the space shuttle in 2011. Both Hurley and Behnken are space shuttle veterans. In fact, Hurley was the pilot on STS-135, the final shuttle flight. Both are married to former astronauts who have spent time in space. Maybe it’s all NASA hype, but the two men are reportedly best friends and enjoy spending time together with their sons. It certainly paints a nice picture. Who wouldn’t like to have the four of them over for dinner and drinks? What great stories they must have.

Needing government money—and thus the support of members of Congress—NASA projects source components from all over the country, spreading the dollars around among key congressional districts.

Privately funded, SpaceX has no such requirements. Instead, it is highly vertically integrated, bringing raw materials in one end of its Hawthorne, California, factory and shipping finished rockets and space capsules out the other end. SpaceX even manages all of its own flights through its launch control and monitoring facilities in Hawthorne and at its various launch sites, including Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Although its approach to building rockets may be entirely different than NASA’s, SpaceX has learned a thing or two about promotion from the federal agency. NASA’s PR machine, especially during Apollo, was a work of art, building goodwill and visibility for the lunar launches—all done slickly and organically with little outlay of money.

Similarly, SpaceX is practically a household name, but has spent almost nothing on advertising. Instead it has become known through its slick branding and outlandish promotions. This is, after all, the same company that launched Musk’s Tesla roadster into a solar orbit aboard an enormous Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018. As of early June 2020, the mannequin Starman, casually sitting in the driver’s seat of the electric car, was located some 145 million miles from Earth, headed back toward our planet at a speed of 38,000 mph—giving Musk extreme bragging rights for having the fastest car in the solar system, and perhaps the universe.

When it comes to style, SpaceX even outdid NASA. Instead of the lumpy spacesuits of the Apollo program or the baggy “pumpkin suits” worn by shuttle astronauts, Hurley and Behnken launched in trim, tailored SpaceX-designed suits with pressure and cooling systems slickly integrated into their custom-built seats aboard the Dragon Endeavour capsule.

But it was the raw and unmitigated thrust of that Falcon 9 rocket that literally moved those of us fortunate enough to get to see the launch on May 30. I stood at a viewing site at the air force station in awe as the sound waves washed over me, wishing for nothing but the best for the two men inside, for NASA, for SpaceX, and for the nation bold enough to support such an effort.

As space reporter Miles O’Brien told me, nothing unites the world better and faster than a historic launch. “Space is one of the few things that can bring us together in a positive way,” he said. “It literally and figuratively lifts us up. Space exploration gives us a chance to gather together at the communal hearth, as it were, and celebrate our accomplishments as human beings.”

After the sordid first half of 2020 with its global pandemic and civil unrest, we were in great need of time at that communal hearth reflecting on what we can do when all cultures come together and are allowed to contribute equally to moving us forward as a society. Thank you NASA and SpaceX for that respite.

Email [email protected], @tomhaines29